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VANCOUVER -- A computer science professor with a reputation for giving graduate students real-life business experience will be the University of British Columbia's new president.

Arvind Gupta will become UBC's 13th president on July 1, when current president Stephen Toope leaves to become director of the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs.

Gupta, 52, said he is thrilled to be chosen for this position at UBC, which he said has "transformed itself from a regional powerhouse into a global player."

"We at UBC are entrusted to prepare our students to take on the challenges in this fast-evolving world, getting them ready to approach whatever gets thrown at them. They have to be ready with an open mind, a discerning eye and flexibility of thought," he said.

A professor at UBC since 2009, Gupta is the chief executive officer of Mitacs, a national not-for-profit organization that strives to make Canada more innovative and that is headquartered at UBC. Mitacs is an acronym for mathematics, information technology and complex systems and is a program that operates research and training programs at several Canadian universities.

One of the programs at Mitacs, Globalink, is designed to compete with Ivy League universities and attract top undergraduate university students from around the world to Canadian universities in the hope that they might decide to pursue graduate studies here, and ultimately move to Canada.

"You have to set high standards if you want to get the very best. You have to believe that they will choose you over everything else. I think Canada, as a country, should start believing this and our universities should see ourselves not as not as good as Princeton or Harvard, but that we can be better than Princeton or Harvard and the students will choose us over those institutions," Gupta told The Vancouver Sun last summer.

Gupta was born in Punjab, India in the city of Jalandhar. He moved to the United States, where he lived between the ages of five and seven, growing up in Timmins, Ont. He moved to Vancouver in 1991 where he still lives with his wife, Michelle Pereira. He has three daughters, two of whom are students at UBC.

Allen Eaves, professor emeritus of UBC and also founder of StemCell Technologies, one of B.C.'s largest biotech companies, has known Gupta for about 15 years, and the pair worked together when Eaves was chair of the Mitacs board of directors.

"This guy has a passion for education and getting people to work in the global marketplace," Eaves said, adding that Gupta's work at Mitacs pioneered a new educational model and internships for graduate students that help academia and business work together.

"Arvind has been passionate about supporting Canadian industry and building that up," Eaves said. "He has a wonderful ability to deal with government and with business and not ruffle any feathers, but just to get things done. He's a tremendous facilitator and a superb administrator."

Gupta said his first priority is to meet with faculty and students.

"Over the next few months, I hope to sit down with as many of you as I can to listen to your ideas and hear your perspective on what we can do together," Gupta said.

His focus on innovation makes him highly conscious of the rapidly changing world.

"In this new world the very major interaction between research, learning and work is morphing before our very eyes. It's a world where networks, knowledge and ideas are supplanting traditional currencies as measures of empowerment, wealth and well-being," Gupta said. "Our universities are at the vanguard of this change."

A 22-member committee of faculty, staff, students, alumni and others selected Gupta after an international search that began last September.

"How good is it that we can conduct an international search and the very best candidate is one of our own?" said UBC board of governors chair John Montalbano.

"The opportunity to lead one of the world's great universities attracted outstanding candidates, but Dr. Arvind Gupta clearly stood out as the best choice to lead this great university."

Montalbano thanked Toope for his eight years of leadership.

"His ability to attract and retain outstanding talent have further solidified UBC's global standing," Montalbano said. "He has exerted a powerful influence on learning in the province."

Toope said he is "delighted" that Gupta will be taking over.

"In him, UBC has found a leader with rare attributes: critical thinking, inspiring vision and the courage to chart a bold course," Toope said. "He brings a sense of strong purpose about the role that the university plays in fundamentally discovering in the very essence of teaching and learning, which is our greatest achievement ... and a sense of purpose about how the university can help us make the world a better place."

"Dr. Gupta is well regarded in academic, private and public sectors. His recent work at Mitacs — partnering with government and pairing academia with industry in the pursuit of commercialization and knowledge transfer — has been very positive for local industries, universities and especially for students," Virk said. "I trust that he will bring the visionary leadership and management required to lead a large, complex organization such as UBC."

Gupta earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1991 and is a member of the Government of Canada's Science, Technology and Innovation Council, an advisory body on science and technology.

Gupta's five-year term will begin July 1, when he will become the university's 13th president and also its vice-chancellor. He will retain his professorship, but will resign as head of Mitacs.

A handful of protesters interrupted the announcement, chanting about animal testing at UBC, but Gupta said he appreciates diverse opinions.

Gupta was questioned about campus security and whether he would consider installing closed-circuit television cameras on campus, but he said he was not yet fully informed about the issue.

UBC has more than 58,000 students and 15,000 faculty and staff. Its annual budget is $2.2 billion.

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